Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Guest Post & Giveaway with Bryan Cohen

Bryan Cohen here, guest poster and author, promoting my new book The Post-College Guide to Happiness for The Happiness Blog Tour. I'm giving away free digital review copies of the book and doing a giveaway for paperback copies, audio copies and even a Kindle Fire! Read on and check out the info below the post.

"To be happy is not the purpose of our being rather it is to deserve happiness."
- Johann G. Fichte

Deserving Happiness

I think that everybody deserves happiness if he or she is willing to work for it. I came into a conflict with my editor over whether or not I should use the phrase “everybody deserves happiness.” After all, she’d had a boyfriend of many years leave her with that same line. He said he just wanted to be happy and something along the lines of “Don’t I deserve to be happy?” Maybe he did deserve to be happy and maybe he didn’t, but it’s unlikely that a new girl, a new car, a new job or a new location will make anybody completely happy. There are really two parts to becoming happy. Working on being happy and deserving that happiness.

I’ve written a lot of posts on this tour about working on the happiness but not very many about deserving it. I don’t think there’s some kind of cut off line for happiness. It’s not the kind of situation where if you’ve been this nice, you’re on the left side of the happiness line and if you’ve been this cruel, you’re on the negative side of the line. You don’t have to be perfect to deserve to be happy, which is thankful, because nobody is perfect.

People who deserve and earn their happiness are kind to others and not just when other people are looking. They aren’t simply kind externally, but they think kind thoughts about the people around them. Those deserving of happiness can certainly get angry at others, but they eventually snap out of it and think the wiser of it. A person who deserves happiness may contribute time or money to charity and he may spend all of his time creating something for the betterment of man and womankind. The deserver of happiness doesn’t always say the right things but almost always means well. She gives people a chance and trusts others, even if they’ve let her down a time or two.

This person doesn’t necessary do all of these things, but he makes a concerted effort to do at least one as often as possible. Lastly, she is grateful that she has the opportunity to be happy even if circumstances aren’t always pointing in the sunniest of directions.

If you can adopt some of these habits, you’ll find that one of the best ways to become happy is to be deserving of said happiness.

Giveaway:

Bryan Cohen is giving away 61 paperback and audio copies of The Post-College Guide to Happiness and a Kindle Fire between now and May 7th, 2012 on The Happiness Blog Tour. All entrants receive a free digital review copy of The Post-College Guide to Happiness. Bryan hopes to give away at least 1,000 copies during the blog tour. To enter, post a comment with your e-mail address or send an e-mail to postcollegehappiness (at) gmail.com. Bryan will draw the names at the end of the tour. Entries will be counted through Sunday, May 6th.

I agree. I think that everyone deserves happiness. I don't think it's OK to step all over people or intentionally hurt people to get it. My heart goes out to people with low self esteem who truly think that they don't deserve happiness. It's sad.catherinelee100 at gmail dot com